Andy Reid's exit is now imminent

The only question remaining is when the plug will be pulled.

Andy Reid may be in the final days of his time with the Philadelphia Eagles. (Rob Carr, Getty Images )

November 18, 2012|Nick Fierro

LANDOVER, Md. — — Never in anyone's wildest imagination could the end of the Andy Reid era as coach of the Philadelphia Eagles have gone down like this.

Anyone who says they saw it unfolding this way is lying or insane or both. Probably both.

What we're seeing with this team is not to be believed. The Eagles have become the NFL's version of Monty Python's dead parrot, bereft of life, an EXXXXX!!!!!-football team.

They have gone from not being able to pull a couple close ones out at the end to not even being competitive.

They have become quite possibly the worst team in a league that doesn't have very many good ones.

And given Reid's track record as the most successful coach in franchise history and longest tenured coach in the league, it is even more baffling how any team with his fingerprints on it can be this dreadful.

We could have easily seen this with Norv Turner or Romeo Crennel or Mike Mularkey or any of the half-dozen or so other coaches who are due to lose their jobs by the start of next season. Heck we could even see it with Mike Shanahan, who's won two Super Bowls in a past life and whose Washington Redskins embarrassed Reid's Eagles 31-6 at FedEx Field on Sunday.

But with Reid, never.

Poorly as he's drafted, poorly as he's judged free-agent talent and questionable as he's been with his decision-making regarding assistant coaches, there was no way the Eagles could be this bad this year. Not with all this talent, not even with an offensive line as bad as it is and a secondary that can't cover anyone.

But here they are, at 3-7, having beaten two of the best teams in the league early but not capable of beating anyone now, at least any of the teams they have remaining on their schedule.

So what's next?

The only sensible move would be for him to move on, and not wait for the end of the season to do it.

The organization has come as far as it can with him, with quarterback Michael Vick, with the coordinators in place and the line coaches Reid recycled.

Maybe Joe Banner, one of the most brilliant men you'll meet in this league, actually did see it, and maybe that's why the former team president hit the eject button and parachuted safely into Cleveland. Or maybe this happened in part because his power was slowly but surely taken from him.

Not sure. But he's not here anymore, and neither are former general managers Tom Heckert and Tom Modrak or any of the players former coach Ray Rhodes drafted. This is mentioned because Reid has yet to win a playoff game with only his own guys, and he never will.

Not with this team. Not with any other.

That's not to say he isn't an excellent coach. You can't argue with a 129-87-1 record in the regular season and a 10-9 record in the postseason. Doesn't matter how soft the division might have been. There was a good, long period when the Eagles were bona fide contenders and they took care of every little detail except winning the Super Bowl, which a lot of teams during that span also failed to do.

Now everyone has to see that his magic is lost, that it's simply time. To go another day with Reid as the head coach and executive vice president of football operations would be a fruitless charade.

Keeping him here to finish out the season, which cannot be salvaged anymore, would be a pointless exercise, energy wasted. Furthermore, it would send the wrong message to the players, who must be reminded of the fact that all of them are expendable.

Listen to Mike Patterson, the longest-tenured Eagle by virtue of being the first player drafted in 2005, right after their one and only Super Bowl appearance under Reid.

That 2005 season, which fell apart for a variety of reasons, most of them injuries, was the only one in Reid's tenure that can be compared to this.

"It was sort of like the same, in a way," Patterson said. "Everybody really wants to go out there and work hard and make something happen."

Patterson could not identify a common denominator from the '05 season, which might be the most convincing evidence of all that Reid's era is over. The Eagles came back to win a playoff game the very next season and went to their fifth conference championship game under Reid two seasons after that.

With this year's team, despite all the young talent that hasn't peaked, there is no hope for a bright future under the current staff.

"It's hard to say," Patterson replied, diplomatically. "We had a lot more players [then] and stuff like that. It was a different atmosphere, of course. But I can' really compare the two teams."

Sure sounds like he just did.

Patterson said after Sunday's debacle that he had no doubt this year's team will turn it around. That was him trying to be a leader.

In reality, this team has lost its way for good under a coach who, God bless him, has tried everything he could think of to make things right again.

But now it's reached the point where every new approach, whether it's a change in the basic fundamental line play or starting quarterback or defensive coordinators or anything else just makes the team worse.

Reid most recently coached Sunday's game like he was begging to be fired, recklessly endangering their most valuable player, LeSean McCoy, by leaving him in a hopeless contest until the bitter end, which came prematurely when McCoy was felled by a concussion.

Reid, whose mantra this season has been that he will always do what's best for the organization, did not do what was best for anyone — even himself — on Sunday.